The Office of the Director of National Intelligence — the star around which the U.S. Intelligence Community orbits — has released the figure for its budget request in the fiscal year 2025 National Intelligence Program, a.k.a. NIP. But with the target budget comes many questions.
ODNI said the agency is asking for $73.4 billion in appropriations, nearly $2.5 billion more than the sum it asked for in the previous year. Without any accompanying details, those in the government contracting industry are waiting with bated breath to know the breakdown in terms of how the agency plans to spend the money.
Many of these questions will be answered at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Intel Summit on Sept. 19. For a decade now, the event has solidified as the must-attend IC-focused GovCon hub for networking, deal-making and education. The IC is famously tight-lipped, but the Intel Summit is one place they feel comfortable disclosing details and hard-to-find information. Don’t miss out — register now!
One possible usage of the budget could apply to ODNI’s collaboration with the Defense Innovation Unit, which reflects a commitment to up and coming technologies and embracing cutting edge tools.
At the Intel Summit, multiple panels will train their eye on the most prominent of all of the emerging technologies: artificial intelligence. One panel early in the day will discuss how data — and the AI it feeds — crucially plays a role in furthering the IC’s mission and another, a little later on, will explore the intersection of open-source intelligence collection and AI.
The day will conclude with remarks from Dana Madsen, deputy director of ODNI’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. He will break down the cyber defense aspects of ODNI’s outlook and may have insights on the agency’s budget and how much of it he can share with the industrial base.
The General Services Administration’s Office of Professional Services and Human Capital Categories has made GSA eBuy the required tool for task order solicitation for the One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services Plus program, also known as OASIS+, as part of efforts to improve acquisition transparency and efficiency.
The agency said Tuesday GSA eBuy will provide OASIS+ customers with the capability to review awarded vendors, submit requests for information through GSA’s Market Research As a Service program, manage task orders from solicitation to task order award and provide a secure environment to issue information only to OASIS+ contract holders.
For OASIS+ industry partners, GSA eBuy will enable them to view and respond to RFIs and solicitations, directly submit proposals to the buying agency and receive automated notifications, among other functions.
According to GSA, awards and notices to proceed will be issued to OASIS+ vendors through the first or second quarter of fiscal year 2025, and contracting officers with the Delegation of Procurement Authority can begin placing orders about seven to 10 days after the NTPs or awards are issued for each contract.
The agency noted that the move does not impact the OASIS program and that customers can still use the Symphony task order management platform for all OASIS task orders. Customers also have the flexibility to use GSA ASSIST, GSA eBuy or Symphony to collect responses for OASIS task order RFIs and requests for proposals.
Last week, Executive Mosaic’s GovCon Index declined by 4.08%, closing with an average of $5,312.73 on Friday. These losses represent the highest weekly decline since GovCon Index launched in December 2023. GovCon Index is an aggregate index that collects and presents stock market data from 30 key government contracting organizations in real time. Users can leverage this information to assess the financial performance of each tracked company and gain insights into the broad trends shaping today’s GovCon marketplace. Only one company, Palantir, recorded growth on Friday. GovCon Index achieved slight gains on Wednesday, but was unable to turn the tide before
The Office of Inspector General of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said the FDIC’s security controls in its cloud computing environment are not effectively implemented in five areas: identity and access management, cloud secret protection, patch management, flaw remediation and audit logging. The audit, conducted in partnership with Sikich, found six common themes of security weaknesses in the FDIC cloud platform, the OIG said Thursday. According to Sikich, the cloud platform teams did not consistently implement secure coding practices, configure cloud platform security settings per cloud service providers and industry best practices, or provision access to its cloud-based systems in
Even though debates have been some of the most eagerly anticipated events in presidential campaigns, audiences and candidates have long wondered whether they matter.
The political history collections at the National Museum of American History, where I am a curator specializing in the history of presidential campaigns and campaign rhetoric, include several objects that can help explore that question, as the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris approaches.
Where do the candidates meet?
Although voters have come to expect debates in the weeks leading up to an election, they are a relatively new part of the campaign cycle, beginning only in 1960. The presence of televisions in 90% of American homes at the time and a federal law making it easier to air live political discussions enabled television networks to host four debates that year between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. Held in TV network studios with no audience, the debates produced the largest television audiences of the time.
These chairs were used in the first presidential debate, held in the CBS studio in 1960. Plaques on the back identify who sat in each chair.Smithsonian National Museum of American History
The League of Women Voters, a nonpartisan organization that promotes voting rights, sponsored the debates from 1976 to 1988. Most of the league debates were held with an audience in large public venues such as convention centers. However, the League and the campaigns often disagreed on exactly how debates should be structured or whether they should happen at all.
After two studies recommended a bipartisan organization be established to sponsor the debates and ensure their permanence, the Commission on Presidential Debates was created. It sponsored every debate between 1988 and 2020.
Longwood University presented its mascot Elwood as a bobblehead debater to commemorate the university’s hosting of the 2016 vice presidential debate.Smithsonian National Museum of American History
In 2004, Case Western Reserve University produced a Magic 8 Ball to commemorate the vice presidential debate held on its campus. Possible answers include ‘Consult Me Later,’ ‘Cannot Foretell Now’ and ‘You Can Count On It.’Smithsonian National Museum of American History
While a Magic 8 Ball may not be the best way to predict how candidates will answer questions, scholarly research, including my own, shows there are some predictable messages viewers can listen for during debates.
First, because candidates, including Harris and Trump, may be given just a few minutes to answer a dozen or more questions, they will often develop an overall theme. For example, in 1976, Carter tied many of his answers to national unity. In 2016, Trump repeated the word “great” in answers on trade, crime and the economy.
Second, candidates try to show what kind of president they will be by highlighting their experience and leadership traits. This can include discussion of their previous military or government positions or descriptions of themselves as strong or compassionate leaders.
Finally, candidates want to show that they share the values and hopes of the audience. For example, in the 1980 debate, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan asked viewers, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” as a way of connecting with regular Americans.
What might audiences remember?
Sometimes the best-chosen words do not yield the most memorable moments. In the first debate in 1976, audio equipment broke down, cutting off the audio feed to the broadcast. For 27 minutes, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter stood silently – and awkwardly – in place while America watched and waited.
This podium clock helped enforce the rules in the 1976 debates: three-minute answers, followed by two-minute rebuttals.Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Both men later said they wished they had been less ill at ease and had not only communicated their discomfort, but had also taken a moment to show viewers the respect they had for their opponent.
During the 1992 town hall debate, President George H.W. Bush looked at his watch. He later claimed he was trying to see how much time was left, but some thought it communicated boredom or that he was uncaring.
In 2000, Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore rolled his eyes and sighed deeply while his opponent, President George W. Bush, was speaking. Viewers in the auditorium later said they didn’t really notice his actions, but television viewers, watching both candidates on a split-screen feed, received a message of arrogance or disrespect.
Do debates matter?
The Commission on Presidential Debates produced this poster to encourage watching the debates and voting.Smithsonian National Museum of American History
Although recent elections brought renewed doubt that debates still matter, this year’s campaign has made them relevant again. Most notably, the first debate in the 2024 cycle, between Trump and President Joe Biden, was unprecedented in that it happened before the nominating conventions and led to a change of nominee for the Democratic Party.
For years, however, large numbers of voters, particularly undecided ones, said debates mattered because the events helped them decide how to vote. But even without statistical proof of an immediate effect, there may be a larger sense in which debates matter.
Everything about how NASA does business has changed significantly over the years and large driver of that is the commercialization of space.
The agency has always leaned on the private sector to build things for them, but the shift in recent years is toward commercial companies operating flights and launches.
Casey Swails, NASA’s deputy associate administrator, told attendees of Washington Technology’s Doing Business with NASA Power Breakfast last Friday about how the commercialization of space touches all of aspects of NASA operations. This includes aeronautics, space exploration and scientific discovery.
“Where we are going, we need everyone,” she said in describing the collaborative nature of how NASA works.
The big initiative at NASA is Artemis, which will return astronauts to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program ended in the 1970s.
By the way: In Greek mythology, Artemis was Apollo’s twin.
The Artemis mission will be very different than that of the Apollo.
“The first time we went, I described it as a short duration camping trip of going and picking up some rocks coming home,” Swails said. “This time we’re going back to stay, and I’d probably be overselling it by saying it’s like a city on the moon, but it is kind of like a one-horse buggy town, but with lunar rovers and cool technology.”
The goal is to have a sustainable presence on the moon to learn how to work, how to live, how to practice as preparation for going to Mars, she said.
While Artemis captures the imagination, NASA is also hard at work on initiatives closer the Earth. One of those areas is aeronautics, where NASA is conducting research to make airliners more efficient and working to bring back commercial supersonic flights by reducing the sonic boom.
In keeping with NASA’s strategy to collaborate with commercial companies, Swails described how NASA is working with more than 100 companies and the Federal Aviation Administration to develop electric air taxis and drones.
“Right now, you can’t fly a drone outside of the visual line of sight,” she said. “We’re transforming the future of the airspace to allow for that in the very near future. There is super exciting stuff happening in our aeronautics community.”
Those kinds of initiatives are part of NASA’s mission to foster a strong and growing space economy, Swails said.
Collecting data is a critical component of NASA’s earth science mission.
“We have partnerships with a dozen other agencies on to utilize the data, so think of NOAA, the National Weather Service, EPA and USDA,” she said. “It really gets to the application of science. We are helping farmers think about when to plant crops with the irrigation data NASA provides.”
On the horizon is NASA’s 2040 initiative, which is focused on long-term investments in the technologies NASA needs to meet its objectives.
“This is really about making some tough decisions today to propel us into the future and making some investments today to propel us into the future,” Swails said. “It isn’t just about mission technologies but the technology we need to do our jobs.”
One example she gave involved a a scientist working with a wind tunnel hundreds of miles away and managing robots to do the hands-on work.
“That doesn’t seem so far away but it also isn’t easy to implement, particularly when you have a lot of old stuff,” Swails said.
The plan to implement this vision is in the works and NASA will be asking for industry input. The investments will begin in the government’s 2026 fiscal year.
“You are going to see a lot of work coming out of the agency, because we know we have got to have a plan and we welcome your feedback,” she said.
An emerging picture indicates that better communications tech between agencies may have prevented the Trump shooting—and that getting the Secret Service, law enforcement, and the Department of Homeland Security on the same page communications-wise could be instrumental in preventing future assassination attempts.
A congressional report from late last month notes that the Secret Service didn’t have the right radios to talk to Butler County police—because they forgot to pick them up before the event—and that likely played a key role in the poorly coordinated response.
“On [July] 12, the Butler County ESU Commander personally reminded the USSS counter-sniper teams to pick up their assigned radios at the ESU Command Post RV, which was positioned according to planning at the Butler Fairgrounds, the following morning before 1100 hrs. It didn’t happen,” notes the August 12 report from the office of U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La..
That failure speaks to a larger equipment problem: Secret Service, DHS, military, and police radios don’t all work together.
On July 30, days after the head of the U.S. Secret Service resigned, the acting director Ronald Rowe told lawmakers that a key communication gap contributed to the failure to prevent the shooting.
Local law enforcement spotted the attacker, Thomas Matthew Crooks, “scurrying” to position himself to take a shot from the roof of a nearby building. But the unified command on the ground relayed only part of what was going on to the Secret Service: namely that they were responding to an incident.
“Apparently, not having that real-time information is what really hindered us in being able to understand more than: it was just the locals working an issue at the three o’clock. There was actually a little bit something more urgent than that,” Rowe told lawmakers.
Because there were so many different varieties of communications equipment, local law enforcement and SWAT personnel couldn’t communicate directly with Secret Service officers. It is technically possible, Rowe said, “ But it would take a long time to get it done, and for a one-day or an eight-hour operation, it requires a lot, and it would be months of planning, of knowing that we are going to go to this particular jurisdiction and that we’re going to need your frequencies, the keys, and we’re going to need to load you into our radios.”
This is also a problem for the military, particularly those elements that often work with partner militaries, like special operations forces.
Ari Schuler, the CEO of goTenna, a company that provides mobile mesh network technology to the military, Customs and Border Protection, and others,, said the technical barriers to better-incorporated communications aren’t as big as the policy and training issues around getting interoperable equipment to agencies. Adopting new tools and tech like the Team Awareness Kit, plus the ubiquity of modern smartphones, means there are plenty of ways to collect and distribute a real-time information picture to everyone who needs it.
Mobile mesh networks that bridge the gaps between different communications systems, protocols, etc., could help link everything together in a single data web that could then be distributed to many different types of devices securely.
The problem is partly due to domestic agencies, including the Secret Service, just not getting the resources they need, he said.
“I was at CBP and DHS for close to a decade. When you look at both the resourcing and the training regimen of military versus law enforcement, it is very different. DOD had an order of magnitude or more overall resources than we did at DHS,” Schuler said.
But training and exercising is another barrier to wider adoption, he said. The military has a lot of time to conduct exercises to see what is and isn’t working in the field, whereas many law enforcement agencies and the Secret Service do not have time to take away from their regular duties for similar exercises.
“When you are in the military, most of your time is training, unless you’re operating. When you’re in law enforcement, you have very few contiguous weeks carved out, and a lot of it is for qualifying on your weapon and all the different—depending on what your role is—support things and things like that,” he said.
These are the sort of gaps lawmakers don’t spend much time thinking about until an incident occurs. But that’s started to change since the July assassination attempt.
During the hearing, Sen. Jon Ossof, D-Ga., asked Rowe: “The inability swiftly to link personnel from disparate jurisdictions at the local, state, and federal level, is a vulnerability for the nation, is it not?”
Rowe responded, “I would think, based on my experience, being able to talk to other agencies real-time certainly would assist in that response.”
In the wake of last year’s wildfires on the island of Maui, one moment that stuck with Rep. Jill Tokuda, D-Hawaii, about the federal government’s response was watching the head of the Small Business Administration help a displaced resident by serving as an ad hoc translator.
“I remember in just the days after the fire, Administrator [Isabel] Guzman coming to the war memorial with us to see a congregate shelter, helping us to actually translate in Spanish, because we didn’t have a translator right there at the time, and allowing my team to then help this person get their papers that had burned in the fire,” she said.
“We’re here today in part to grieve with you and to acknowledge those painful losses, but we’re mostly here looking forward — to reinforce the federal government’s continued commitment to helping Hawaii recover,” said Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., at a House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee field hearing on Sept. 4 in Hawaii.
The federal government has spent approximately $3 billion on Maui wildfire recovery efforts and has made significant progress; however, continuing improvements are essentially on hold unless Congress provides additional funding, which it may do before the end of the month.
In August, the Federal Emergency Management Agency began limiting use of money in the Disaster Relief Fund to lifesaving and life-sustaining activities, which occurs when the fund is short on money.
“We’re unable to obligate the funding that’s needed to rebuild permanent infrastructure, and so while we currently, right now, have sufficient funds to continue to help individuals with housing or other immediate needs, that too is starting to be threatened,” said Bob Fenton, a FEMA regional administrator and the chief federal response coordinator for the wildfire, at the hearing. “We’re at a very good stage right now with debris being removed, water coming on and power coming on to actually start rebuilding the infrastructure. And [the funding shortfall] will delay that process and elongate the recovery and impact Maui further.”
President Joe Biden in June requested a total of $27.5 billion in supplemental funding for certain disaster needs, including with respect to the Maui wildfires.
Congress must act to avert a government shutdown before Sept. 30 when the current fiscal year ends and funding expires. This likely would be the chamber’s soonest opportunity to replenish FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund.
House Republicans’ measure to extend government funding through March 28, 2025, which the chamber is scheduled to vote on this week, would provide an additional $10 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund.
Representatives at the hearing also spoke in support of providing funding for the Housing and Urban Development Department’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, which is used to rebuild areas affected by disasters and support long-term recovery.
Other milestones in Maui’s wildfire recovery include:
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers finished clearing fire debris from residential properties — months ahead of schedule — and constructed a temporary elementary school for 320 students.
SBA has provided more than $405 million in loan offers (more than $90 million of which has been disbursed) and awarded $425 million in prime contracts to Hawaiian-owned firms.
EPA removed 200 tons of hazardous material, ahead of schedule and under budget, and completed its drinking water and wastewater emergency response.
Fenton testified that debris removal is expected to be completed by February 2025.
Agency officials also discussed how they incorporated cultural sensitivity into their recovery efforts.
“The Corps worked closely with cultural advisors and was sensitive to Native Hawaiian traditions, including pule, or prayer, before missions and significant events. These practices, led by cultural monitors, honored the land and the people, fostering trust and respect with the community,” said Col. Eric Swenson. “This approach was critical in ensuring that our efforts were not just about rebuilding infrastructure, but also about doing our part to heal a community deeply rooted in its heritage.”
Government Operations and the Federal Workforce Subcommittee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, at the hearing thanked federal employees who have been working in Hawaii.
“Those who represent the federal government, FEMA and other agencies, they have been on the ground here for a year. They feel like their lives have been benefited because [of their] service back to people on this island,” he said. “And I wish to thank them at this time, on behalf of the United States Congress and the American people, for their work, their diligence, their honesty and the reasons why they came were to be of help and assistance. I think that should not be forgotten.”
Individuals at the hearing also urged the need for increased access to affordable housing to ensure that Maui residents can remain on the island. Tokuda referenced a Hawaii State Rural Health Association survey from June that found 45% of fire-impacted Maui County residents were considering leaving and a majority know someone who has left since the wildfires.
“While we can rebuild structures, if we do not return Lahaina to the very people who represent the spirit and the soul of our community, if we don’t recognize the faces of our friends and our family as we repopulate, then we will have lost this battle for our people, and even one more family lost is one too many,” testified Maui County Mayor Richard Bissen through tears.
When Jerry Ma was announced back in the spring as a finalist for the Sammies — an awards program that honors excellence and innovation in the career federal service — he told Government Executivethat the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is a “perfect home” for him.
“I believe that technologists can have an outsized impact in making our public service and public administration more responsive to the needs of today, the needs of the 21st century,” said Ma, the USPTO’s director of emerging technology and chief artificial intelligence officer. “By becoming a technologist in public service, I can essentially do my little bit to help reverse this asymmetry between public sector and private sector tech capabilities, which thereby furthers belief in government and our society and our way of life.”
The nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which sponsors the Sammies, on Monday announced that Ma had won in the emerging leaders category, an award that recognizes federal employees under the age of 35.
Ma developed new technology tools for USPTO, including one that sifts through the agency’s archives to point examiners toward documents that are most similar to the patent application under consideration.
Officially called the Samuel J. Heyman Service to America medals, named after PPS’ founder, the program has honored more than 760 federal employees since 2002. This year’s honorees will be celebrated at a ceremony on Wednesday.
“As we recognize the winners of this year’s Sammies on the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — a stark reminder of the vital importance of effective government — we honor their passion, hard work and dedication, along with that of the more than 2 million civil servants who have answered the call to serve our country,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, in a statement. “During a time when federal workers face more scrutiny and damaging rhetoric than ever, these talented individuals have embodied the highest standards of public service in America. With the coming change in presidential administrations, our nonpartisan, merit-based civil service will, as always, provide the critical continuity of government that is so vital for our democracy.”
Paul A. Volcker Career Achievement — Christopher Mark of the Mine Safety and Health Administration for his work to prevent “roof falls,” which used to be the top cause of death for underground coal miners, but 2016 was the first year there were zero fatalities attributed to roof collapses. Author Michael Lewis recently profiled Mark for The Washington Post as part of a series titled “Who is government?”
Management Excellence — Amira Boland formerly of the Office of Management and Budget for leading policies across nearly six years and two administrations to improve government services as the agency’s first-ever customer experience lead. Her work has led to timesaving Medicare enrollment, modernized online disaster assistance applications and a pilot program for eligible applicants to renew U.S. passports online.
In an “exit interview” with NextGov/FCW, Boland said: “When I was writing my goodbye email and interacting with colleagues who were coming to say goodbye, the thing that just made me so emotional was…how many people I didn’t expect the customer experience work had helped them do a thing — whether it was in their agency or at an interagency meeting or even budget examiners at OMB — stories I had never even heard of or known, that this [customer experience] movement had empowered them to do something different and something amazing.”
In addition to these six winners, Yan Ping (Judy) Chen and Jay D. Evans of the Agriculture Department received the People’s Choice Sammie, which is voted on by the public.
Winners were selected by a committee of leaders in business and government, including Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., Rep. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla. and longtime PBS NewsHour reporter Judy Woodruff.
PPS also will present the Spirit of Service award, “which recognizes individuals outside the federal workforce who have made a significant contribution to build a better government and a stronger democracy,” to “Captain America”actor Chris Evans, filmmaker Mark Kassen and technology entrepreneur Joe Kiani. The trio in 2020 co-founded A Starting Point, which is a video-based website that provides civic information and education.
The National Security Agency, FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and international allies have issued a joint advisory on a group of Russian military cyberthreat actors targeting critical infrastructure in the U.S. and abroad as part of efforts to conduct espionage, reputational harm and sabotage.
NSA said Thursday the cyber actors linked to the Russian GRU Unit 29155 are responsible for deploying the WhisperGate malware against victim organizations in Ukraine as early as January 2022 and have performed malicious computer network operations against several NATO member countries.
According to the advisory, the malicious actors’ activities include data exfiltration, infrastructure scanning, data leak operations and website defacements.
Since early 2022, the threat actors have been focused on disrupting efforts to deliver aid to Ukraine.
The advisory includes recommendations to mitigate malicious cyber activities, such as prioritizing routine system updates and remediating known exploited vulnerabilities, segmenting networks and enabling phishing-resistant multifactor authentication for all externally facing account services.
Register here to attend the Potomac Officers Club’s 2024 Intel Summit on Sept. 19 and hear top U.S. intelligence community officials and industry executives discuss the challenges, opportunities and innovation shaping the future of American intelligence.
